My sister asked me to say a few words about the nature of baptism at my nephew’s christening. The following paragraphs are a slightly modified version of that homilette. The audience came from a wide set of backgrounds. In the end, one particular question seemed a common starting point.
What are we doing here?
A child, a gathered collection of parents, family, and friends, and an old and puzzling ritual: the baptism, have summoned our attention.
There will be several of us who are here because we love the parents – this is an occasion to celebrate that beautiful friendship and the strange and messy experience of new life. For a set of us, on the other end of a spectrum, the answer will be a traditional, doctrinal interpretation: What we are doing here is baptizing this child into the mystical body of Christ, cleansing him from the stain of original sin, facilitating and actualizing his invitation into the divine life of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.
But the meaning of this isn’t always crystal clear.
The first answer was straightforward, but perhaps not a helpful interpretation of the religious details. Why, after all, does our friendship and celebration of this child need any of this ritual and imagery?
Meanwhile, those doctrines have some kind of meaning, but they are often a wall of obscure words and not necessarily helpful notions. Do any of us know what the “body of Christ” really is? Do we understand why a child could be a sinner before he’s even begun to understand his responsibilities as a person? And that is to say nothing of the Trinity.
This boy was galloping around the Church yesterday as his mother and grandparents prepared for today, and his attention was wandering through this building, this cavernous collection of sacred artifacts and images, and he would settle from time to time in particular activities – he would chase after his mum or examine his toy drill.
Meanwhile, this ancient mystery and incomprehensible meaning surrounded him, embodied in statues, patterns, words, and images, strewn throughout the building.
I looked and saw this little boy, immersed in meanings that towered over him – this building alone had lived for a thousand years before him, and will survive for countless centuries afterwards – but he was completely unaware of anything but his mum and his toy drill.
It is tempting to say “how cute” and warmly pass over the sentiment, but there was something deeper there.
We each have our own motivations for being here, to be sure, informed by friendships, traditions, values, and who knows what else – but we are like little children, galloping through a world of meanings that we can hardly even see.
What has this ritual meant to the human beings who lived before us? What will it mean to those who come after? What will it mean to this boy? Or his parents? Or his friends? Yet somehow, all of this relates to what we are doing.
There is so much tied to this ritual. We are in a Christian Church, and a child is about to be placed, immersed, in the living images and mysteries that line these walls and windows. They are written into the life of this country, this planet, and probably every age that will ever be known to the mind. It’s up to us to help this child to understand what they mean.
He’ll wonder about this building, about these images. Certainly, about the injustices that they represent, but also about the beauty and goodness. And surely, we ought to wonder together with him, and invite one another into those questions, because no single one of us will ever know the limits of their meaning.
We are about to immerse a child into the meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and there is no greater mystery than what is said to have happened in that life. That is why doctrine is important – it helps us enter the mystery. To be baptized is to be changed, cleansed by the Holy Spirit; imbued with the grace of God. Baptism is the beginning of our participation in the life of Jesus, so that his life might continue here on earth, in us.
Yet, we must keep asking what that means, and thus we really ought to wonder what we’re doing here.
In the deepest sense, however, we’ll just have to wait and see.
For when we are baptized, we are truly immersed in a mystery.